France, the world’s fourth-largest donor country, recently announced a significant cut in its Official Development Assistance (ODA). This decision, triggered by a predicted slowdown in the country’s GDP growth, has caused anger among NGOs and associations that support vulnerable people around the world. Adding to the outrage was France’s failure to have ever met the target of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) on ODA set by the United Nations General Assembly back in 1970.
The €742 million due to be cut from France’s ODA accounts for almost 13% of the 2024 ODA budget initially set at €5.9 billion. So far, no clear details of the decrease have been provided but it is known that €600 million will be deducted from programs under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the remaining €200 million taken from the Ministry of the Economy. Of all the budget sectors, ODA is the worst hit by the decision to reduce funding – 10 times more on average than any other sector.
Fig.1. Budget credits reduced by Decree no. 2024-124 of February 21, 2024, for each sector of the French general budget (in % and absolute amounts)
Source: Focus2030
Although France ranks fourth in the world in terms of ODA spending, it has always failed to meet the 0.7% target of GNI/ODA. In 2022, it allocated €15.2 billion for overseas development which corresponded to 0.56% of its GNI. The announcement of a reduction in ODA came just a few months after the government’s decision to postpone the achievement of the 0.7% target to 2030. This was the second postponement, with the government stating in 2021 that it would meet the target by 2025.
Projections show that the failure to meet the 0.7% target will deprive international development of €11 billion in the period from 2025 to 2030, despite many vulnerable countries being in desperate need of support to overcome current geopolitical, climate, and other challenges.
Fig.2. Estimated trajectory of France’s official development assistance until 2030
Scenario 1: Reaching 0.7% of GNI by 2025
Scenario 2: Reaching 0.7% of GNI by 2030
Source: Focus2030
In the meantime, influential NGOs have reacted to the decision, accusing the French government of a “lack of coherence”. The national platform of French NGOs, Coordination SUD, highlighted that the reduction would strike a painful blow to people facing poverty and in need of humanitarian aid while the Climate Action Network doubted that France would be able to reach the 0.7% target after such a decrease in funding. For its part, Oxfam France noted that the government could have resorted to fiscal solutions to deal with the projected slowdown in GDP growth rather than cut its ODA and thus “sacrificing millions of lives be it in Gaza, Eastern Africa that struggle with famine or in Sahel whose civil society is facing an unprecedented democratic crisis”.
See also: Geopolitical realities drive Germany to dramatically scale back foreign aid commitments
